Saw (franchise)

Saw
Directed by	James Wan Darren Lynn Bousman David Hackl Kevin Greutert
Produced by	Mark Burg Daniel Heffner Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules James Wan Leigh Whannell
Written by	Darren Lynn Bousman Marcus Dunstan Thomas Fenton Patrick Melton James Wan Leigh Whannell
Starring	Tobin Bell Shawnee Smith Leigh Whannell Cary Elwes Danny Glover Donnie Wahlberg Dina Meyer Lyriq Bent Bahar Soomekh Angus MacFadyen Costas Mandylor Scott Patterson Michael Emerson
Music by	Charlie Clouser
Cinematography	David Armstrong
Editing by	Kevin Greutert
Distributed by	Lions Gate
Release date(s)	2004 — present
Running time	411 min. (total)
Country	USA UK
Language	English
Budget	$36 million (combined total of I-V)
Gross revenue	Domestic (as of November 7, 2008) $363,809,454 Worldwide $618,701,461

The Saw series is a horror film franchise created by director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell.

Contents 1 Premise 2 Media 2.1 Films 2.2 Other media 2.3 Future development 3 Prominent characters 4 Synopsis 5 Reception 5.1 Box office performance 5.2 Critical reaction 6 Records 7 References 8 External links

Premise

The series revolves around John Kramer, dubbed by the media the "Jigsaw Killer" (Tobin Bell), a dying man who kidnaps a series of victims and places them in deadly, elaborate traps designed to test them and give them an opportunity to repent their former lifestyles, in which Jigsaw feels that they took their lives for granted. Each concludes with a twist ending that wraps things up, but also creates more questions to be answered in the following film.

Media

There have been five Saw movies to date, with the latest being released on October 24, 2008.^[1] Each film has been released with an R rating by the MPAA, though each was originally rated NC-17, save for Saw V, which received an instant R.^{[citation needed]} Each release made to date was released in theaters in consecutive years on the Friday before Halloween. An uncut version of each installment was subsequently released on DVD the following October before the next came out, save for Saw IV.

Films

• Saw, released on October 29, 2004.
• Saw II, released on October 28, 2005.
• Saw III, released on October 27, 2006.
• Saw IV, released on October 26, 2007.
• Saw V, released on October 24, 2008.

Other media

• Saw, a 2003 short film that served as a promotional tool in pitching the film's potential to Lions Gate, included on the DVD release of Saw.
• Saw: Rebirth, a comic book prequel to the original film released to promote Saw II. Its canonization was later contradicted by events in Saw IV.
• Saw, a video game based on the first film in the series, scheduled for an October 2009 release.^[2][3][4]

Future development

Tobin Bell has stated that he was signed on for a total of five sequels,^[5] and producer Oren Koules confirmed on June 22, 2007 that VI was being written at the time. The authors of the scripts include Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, as well as Thomas Fenton.^[6][7] Costas Mandylor has signed up for the next installment in the horror franchise along with main character, Jigsaw, portrayed by Tobin Bell.^[8] Saw VI will be directed by Kevin Greutert, the editor on all the Saw films to date.^[9]

Prominent characters

Main article: List of Saw characters

List indicator(s)

• A dark grey cell indicates the character was not in the film.

Character	Film
	Saw	Saw II	Saw III	Saw IV	Saw V
John Kramer/Jigsaw	Tobin Bell
Amanda Young	Shawnee Smith
Detective Allison Kerry	Dina Meyer
Detective Eric Matthews		Donnie Wahlberg
Lieutenant Rigg		Lyriq Bent
Adam Faulkner	Leigh Whannell		Leigh Whannell
Jeff Reinhart			Angus Macfadyen
Doctor Lynn Denlon			Bahar Soomekh
Doctor Lawrence Gordon	Cary Elwes
Mark Hoffman			Costas Mandylor
Agent Peter Strahm				Scott Patterson
Jill Tuck			Betsy Russell

Synopsis

Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the earliest roots of the series, presenting John Kramer (the future Jigsaw) as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Jill lost her baby due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene. John grieved over the loss of his child and distanced himself from his friends and his wife.

John and Jill eventually drifted apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John found himself in a rut, trapped by his own complacency. This lifestyle continued for some time, until John became sick and was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter over his squandered life, John began observing the lives of others, and became even more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the gift of life that he had just been denied. After surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John became "reborn", and nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. He designed a test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these traps, changing the world "one person at a time", thus assuming the identity of the "Jigsaw Killer", so named because he removed a puzzle piece shaped chunk of flesh from those who do not escape his traps. Although, he himself states that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something, which was their will to live.

Few of John's victims are able to survive his brutal tests, which are often ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical or psychological torture to escape. The first surviving victim, Amanda Young, views Jigsaw as a hero who ultimately changed her life for the better. Amanda, upon Jigsaw's request, agrees to become his protégé.

Flashbacks from Saw V depict Hoffman's roots with John, which occurred before the first film. It all starts with a man named Seth in a pendulum trap. He is told that he must crush his hands, which he used to murder, to stop a pendulum from slicing him in half. He crushes his hands, but is sliced anyway. Before he dies, he sees an eye watching him from the wall. Later in Saw V it is revealed that this trap occurred before the first movie, and the observer was Hoffman, who wanted revenge on Seth for murdering his sister.

Hoffman is later kidnapped by John. When he wakes up he is in a chair with a shotgun on a hair trigger pointed at his chin, rigged to go off if he tries to break out of the chair. John tells him that he is disgusted by Hoffman's fake Jigsaw trap, and that there was a better way. He introduces Hoffman to his style of "rehabilitation".

In the first film, Jigsaw has chained Dr. Lawrence Gordon, who diagnosed him with cancer, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Faulkner, the photographer who has been tailing the doctor, taking pictures that prove he has been cheating on his wife. Lawrence has instructions to kill Adam in eight hours, or else his wife and daughter will be killed. Meanwhile, detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who suspect Lawrence of being the Jigsaw killer, follow a trail of clues from his other traps. Eventually, Lawrence saws his own foot off in order to escape and try getting help, but due to the haemorrhage is almost certain he died on his way out and left Adam to die alone. Flashbacks from later films show that Amanda later returned and suffocated Adam as a mercy killing. It would be the first time she deliberately intervened during a test and killed someone.

Saw II begins with the police tracking a severely weakened Jigsaw to his latest lair. However, another test is in place, as he and Hoffman have kidnapped the son of Detective Eric Matthews and trapped him and a group of seven convicts previously framed by Matthews in a house that is slowly being filled with sarin gas, Amanda among them. He will trade Daniel Matthews' life for Detective Matthews' time, conversing with him until the game is concluded. Matthews loses his patience and assaults Jigsaw, forcing him to take him to the house, only to discover that the video feed from inside the house had been pre-recorded, the events actually taking place much earlier; Matthews' son was safe all along. Matthews is knocked unconscious by a masked figure and wakes up imprisoned in the bathroom from the first film, which is part of the foundation of the house. Amanda reveals herself to Eric as Jigsaw's protege before leaving him to die. Matthews manages to escape the bathroom by breaking his foot. He confronts and beats Amanda, demanding to know where his son is. Amanda defeats him and leaves him for dead. An unknown figure later drags Eric to a prison cell, keeping him for a future game.

The events of Saw III and IV occur concurrently. Saw III begins with Jigsaw, weakened and near death, confined to a makeshift hospital bed and his protégé Amanda taking over his work, designing traps of her own. However, these traps are inescapable, as Amanda is convinced that Jigsaw's traps have no effect and that people don't change. During this time Detective Allison Kerry is kidnapped and placed in one of Amanda's traps, and despite solving the test she is presented with, she is unable to escape and discovers Amanda to be Jigsaw's apprentice before the trap activates and kills her. Meanwhile, a kidnapped doctor is forced to keep Jigsaw alive while another test is performed on Jeff, a man obsessed with vengeance against the drunk driver who killed his son. Jigsaw, unwilling to allow "a murderer" to continue his legacy, designs a large, complex test for Amanda, which she ultimately fails, resulting in the deaths of both Jigsaw and Amanda. Saw IV, meanwhile, revolves around tests meant for Officer Rigg, which are overseen by Forensic Officer Hoffman, another of Jigsaw's accomplices. Rigg fails his test, resulting in the death of Eric Matthews. Rigg is left in the factory to bleed to death by Hoffman, who later discovers the bodies of Jigsaw and Amanda.

Saw IV ends on a cliffhanger when an autopsy is performed on Jigsaw and a cassette tape coated in wax is found in his stomach. The tape informs Hoffman that he is wrong to think that it is all over just because Jigsaw is dead, and he should not expect to go untested because the games have just begun.

The events of Saw V take place before the autopsy of Jigsaw (Saw IV) and after Jigsaw was killed in Saw III. Detective Mark Hoffman's roots and ties with John are revealed and it becomes clear Hoffman began as a blackmailed first-time killer who eventually became John's willing apprentice.

Meanwhile, in one of Hoffman's first solo tests, five people, all connected together by different roles in a disastrous fire, are put into four interconnected tests of teamwork, killing off one person in each trap. The two remaining test subjects realize at the final trap that each previous trap was meant to be completed by each of the five people doing a small part, rather than killing one person per trap. With this, the two work together and barely manage to escape from the series of traps. It is unclear if either survived. Meanwhile, Hoffman has set up Peter Strahm to appear as Jigsaw's accomplice, while Peter Strahm pursues Hoffman and survives his own test. Though he survives, Peter is eventually killed by two converging walls due to the inability to follow Hoffman's rules. Hoffman is left safely inside a box of glass shards.

Reception

Box office performance

Film	Release date		Box office revenue			Box office ranking		Budget	Reference
	Worldwide	United States	United States	Outside US	Worldwide	All time US	All time worldwide
Saw	October 29, 2004	October 29, 2004	$55,185,045	$47,911,300	$103,096,345	#872	-	$1,200,000	[10]
Saw II	October 28, 2005	October 28, 2005	$87,039,965	$60,700,000	$147,739,965	#447	-	$4,000,000	[11]
Saw III	October 27, 2006	October 27, 2006	$80,238,724	$84,635,551	$164,874,275	#514	-	$10,000,000	[12]
Saw IV	October 26, 2007	October 26, 2007	$63,300,095	$76,052,538	$139,352,633	#736	-		[13]
Saw V	October 24, 2008	October 24, 2008	$54,178,000	$26,029,398	$80,207,398			$10,800,000	[14]
Saw film series			$363,809,454	$285,392,007	$618,701,461			$36,000,000

Critical reaction

Film	Rotten Tomatoes		Metacritic	Yahoo! Movies
	Overall	Cream of the Crop
Saw	46% (153 reviews)[15]	29% (7 reviews)[16]	46% (32 reviews)[17]	B+ [18]
Saw II	35% (109 reviews)[19]	23% (6 reviews)[20]	40% (28 reviews)[21]	B- [22]
Saw III	27% (79 reviews)[23]	6% (7 reviews)[24]	48% (16 reviews)[25]	C+ [26]
Saw IV	18% (66 reviews)[27]	0% (6 reviews)[28]	36% (16 reviews)[29]
Saw V	12% (57 reviews)[30]	9% (11 reviews)[31]	19% (12 reviews)[32]

Records

• If Saw V grosses around more than 62.8 million dollars in its theatrical run, it will become the top-grossing horror franchise of all time in unadjusted dollars.^[33]
• Saw III gave Lions Gate its highest-grossing weekend in history, outdoing the previous record set by Saw II of $31.7 million to a bettering $33.6 million.^[34]
• Both II and III broke records when they were released in the holiday period of Halloween. Both movies managed to top the "Halloween Weekend Openers" Saw II premiered with $31.7 mil in 2005, and Saw III, which bowed to a slightly higher $33.6 mil in 2006. Saw IV premiered at $32.1 million, making it number one at the box office on Halloween weekend 2007.^[35][36]
• All the movies in the Saw series have managed to gross over $50 million, putting them in the top 10 all-time highest total gross for Lions Gate.^[37]
• On IGN's list of the top twenty-five movie franchises of all time, the Saw series ranks as number twenty-five. ^[38]

References

External links

• Official Saw website
• Official II website
• Official III website
• Official IV website
• Official V website
• Official fan club

v • d • e Saw film series Films Saw • II • III • IV • V Characters Jigsaw • Amanda Young • Eric Matthews Writers James Wan • Leigh Whannell • Darren Lynn Bousman • Patrick Melton • Marcus Dunstan Directors James Wan • Darren Lynn Bousman • David Hackl • Kevin Greutert Film soundtracks Saw • II • III • IV • V Other Billy the puppet • Pig mask • Saw: Rebirth • "Hello Zepp" • Saw video game • Saw (short) • Saw: The Ride • Scream Queens

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